Conflict in the organization context: theoretical considerations to base nurses’ management

Abstract

Nurses, when they perform management roles at health services, act as mediators of conflict situations, experienced at the work environment. Studies on this subject evidence that, usually, these professionals face difficulties and a lack of preparation to cope with the conflict in the organization context. This manuscript presents a reflection on conflict management, focusing on conflicts experienced by the nursing team at health organizations and considering nurses the managers of the teams and responsible for the nursing care. When facing conflict situations, nurses frequently ignore this phenomenon within the nursing team. On the other hand, the ones who aim to solve conflicts use strategies to minimize the situation or to punish workers. The literature shows that this professional usually has difficulties to manage these situations especially in the group. Therefore, in the final considerations, authors emphasize the importance to invest on professional capacity building and to create strategies to be used in collective spaces stimulating the analysis and reflection about work relations and professional actions, contributing to make explicit the conflicts which are inherent to interpersonal relationships at work.